The other day I was craving one of my favorite holiday appetizers: chile con queso (recipe provided at the end of this post). I went to the grocery store in search of the main ingredient, Kraft Velveeta®. Up and down the cheese aisle I went, looking among the cheddars and Colbys.

I found the Kraft slices close to bologna (although no Velveeta loaf). I searched the string cheese, the kosher dills (the kind that need to be refrigerated), the lunch meats. Back and forth I went, past the cream cheeses, sour creams, and French dips. No where could I find the big boxes of Velveeta.

And so I did the only thing I could do. I sent a text message to my sister.

I cant find velveeta at albertsons

Look by the box macaroni and cheeses area

Box macaroni and cheese?? Don’t they keep Velveeta with the other cheeses, in the refrigerated section?

I started toward the pasta and as I wheeled around the corner, there they were. Boxes and boxes of Velveeta, stacked at the end of the aisle like cases of water bottles. I picked one up, turned it over in my hands. What exactly is Velveeta anyway??

Growing up in our house, there was almost always a loaf of Velveeta in process. We kept it in its original box, the open end swaddled as tightly as possible to keep the remaining cheese from drying out. In addition to using it for chile con queso, we always made grilled cheese sandwiches out of the stuff. It melted so well!

In fact, according to the SQUIDOO Food & Cooking blog post Velveeta…Unwrapped, this is the whole reason Velveeta exists.

Simply put, Velveeta melts nicely. I don’t think anyone outside of Kraft knows exactly why, but several possibilities have been suggested. Among them, differences in protein structure, oil content, and a Velveeta block’s own desire to please.

Velveeta seemed to be a central figure in a growing trend of households using processed foods. Shake ‘n Bake, SpaghettiOs, Spam, Hamburger Helper, Rice-a-roni—all made occasional appearances in our house. (Dad especially liked fried Spam sandwiches.) Given that our usual fare was beans and chile, enchiladas, tacos, and tortillas, I kind of liked opening the refrigerator and seeing that loaf of orangeish congealed cheese. It made me feel more like everyone else.

According to the Kraft Velveeta official history site, Kraft introduced Velveeta in 1928, “after several years of research on the nutritive value of whey—a by-product of cheese making.” In 1950, the one-pound “loaf” was introduced to the market, and in 1962, the distinctive oval logo that is still used today. A reduced-calorie “light” version of the cheese came out in 1991, and in 2006, Pepper Jack flavor hit the stores.

Velveeta Unwrapped explains that Velveeta is a “pasteurized processed cheese food.” Pasteurized process cheese foods contain one or more cheeses (which have to make up at least 51% of the total weight), with added dry milk, whey solids, or anhydrous milkfat. The mixture is heated with an emulsifier such as sodium or potassium phosphate. Color and flavoring are added, and then it’s poured into molds to congeal.

Mmmm. Tasty.

And the thing is, it is tasty. It’s creamy and gooey. Slightly sweet. Cheesy, yes, but life would be missing something if Velveeta didn’t exist.
Which is why Velveeta is our Writing Topic.

Think about a time when you remembered Velveeta cheese, um, food. Maybe it wasn’t a specific instance with the cheese, um, food itself, but rather, a time. When life was simpler, processed foods were few and far between, and the idea of a cheese that melted was kind of magical.

Then write for 15 minutes. No stopping, no crossing out. Just write.

A few other helpful links

Velveeta Unwrapped is an excellent source on Velveeta. Make sure to see the definitions for “cheese food,” “cheese spread,” and “cheese product,” along with a Flickr Velveeta Cheese Gallery and a recipe for Velveeta Fudge. Also check out the poll that lets readers say whether they lose just a smidge of respect for a person who is discovered to eat Velveeta.

Chile con Queso

This recipe comes from my Aunt Erma. It’s a little more involved than another approach, which is to throw a loaf of Velveeta and a jar of salsa into a crock pot and let it all melt. I prefer Aunt Erma’s queso.

You’ll need:

A pad of butter

One or two diced onions

2 cloves chopped garlic

A small can of hot chile or jalapeños

A small can of peeled tomatoes

A large can of evaporated milk, unsweetened

A pound of Velveeta

Melt the butter on medium heat in a sauce pan, add the onions and garlic, cook for a couple of minutes. Add the chile, tomatoes, and Velveeta. You’ll want to cut the cheese into small pieces so that it melts more easily. Add the evaporated milk.

As the cheese melts, stir the ingredients together. The mixture might be soupy at first, but don’t worry—it will thicken as it cools. Don’t let the mixture boil or the cheese might curdle. If making in a crock pot, make sure you keep it on low.

Once the Velveeta is melted and the ingredients blended, the chile con queso is ready. Serve in bowls as a hot dip with tortilla chips. You can also use it to make nachos.

28 Responses

yb, Velveeta brings back memories of my childhood! We always had a supply of it at home& our school cafeteria served it of, cutting into sticks & the also made these melted sandwiches on toasted hamburger roll halves. They were called cheese dreams & lived up to that name!I do not buy it as J has a dislike for it, but boy, I do miss those cheese dreams!
Your recipe sounds delicious! I might break down & buy the smaller sized box & sneak it in. J probably won’t even notice if I’m careful enough!
We had Brant last night & he just left about 1/2 hour ago. I ade a cheeseburger pie, which is one of his favorites. We took him to the cinema to see Marley & Me. One word of caution, make sure you take tissues with you if you plan to see it! D

Your comment made me laugh, as I also didn’t mention to Jim that the queso was made with Velveeta when we had it the other day. I’m sure he would have refrained from eating it. I’ll probably use a mild shredded cheddar next time I make it, just to see what the difference is in texture.

It is an odd substance, isn’t it? Cheese dreams, eh? That’s a cool memory. And you know, Velveeta doesn’t cut into sticks very well. It’s so soft that it kind of smears and smooshes when you cut it, have you noticed?

Oh, regarding Marley & Me, I’ve tried to take my oldest but she’s heard it’s VERY sad, so she hasn’t wanted to go. I think Jim and I will try to make it, or at least rent it if we can’t before it comes out in DVD.

My grandmother had one thing in her refrigerator which the grandkids were allowed to have with no restrictions – Velveeta. Well, it was cheese so it had to be good for you, right? Right?

I love the Velveeta Unwrapped article. What a lot of, uhmmm, useful info. Though I really do wonder what 5% of the population buys 75% of all the Velveeta sold. Now just who makes up that 5%? And do they admit it freely, or were they coerced. 🙂 Now that is a statistic I would like to see backed up with names and numbers!

By the way, thanks for the Hold the Velveeta recipe. Though I hate to think of myself as a snob, I think I might be happier if I can do chili con queso sans Velveeta. I’ll have to give it a try.

However, one does have to admit, if you want something that is perfectly suited for melting, Velveeta has got to be the winner. Now the big question remains: How DO they do it?

That was a tasty little data tidbit, wasn’t it? 75% of Velveeta sold goes to 5% of the population. That’s like that data point about wealth—2% of the population hold 89% of the world’s wealth. I’m making the wealth one up, of course, but the Velveeta is kind of like it.

And I know this is not appropriate to ask, but since when have I been appropriate? Doesn’t Velveeta sometimes cause constipation? And wouldn’t you think that those 5% of people who eat 75% of Velveeta sold might be a little, um, stagnant?

Do you remember the scene in the movie “Infamous” where Truman Capote goes to the store in Holcomb, Kansas to get some fine cheese to bring as a hostess gift, and all he can find is the pyramid of Velveeta?

I wonder if every grocery story in America had the Velveeta pyramid. Ours did–Glenwood, Minnesota, population 2,500.

Ha! I had to laugh at Bo’s comments, especially the food snob thing. J is a big time food snob! I think I’ve mentioned that before. Heaven forbid I should I buy anything in a box, aside from cake mixes & cereal.
yb, so funny too about Jim & the Velveeta!
Those statistics on Velveeta are amazing!
Guess what I had tonight? Spam, yes, fried Spam! But not J, he had leftover stuffed chicken breasts, gravy, & succotash. Such a snob! D

A pyramid, Teri? I don’t remember Velveeta coming in that shape, only the rectangle “loaf,” as it was called on some of the sites I found. And I don’t remember the scene in Infamous, although I remember him showing up to the detective’s home for dinner.

The pyramid–the grocer would build a pyramid using the loaf boxes. Not unlike how they make displays of any variety of products–beans on sale, a new line of tuna, etc. The Velveeta pyramid, however, was a standard–they never pulled it down.

ybonesy, I just had a chance to read this post more closely. Some great history links there. And the photos! I’ve never seen Velveeta lookin’ as smart and sassy as in your photos! How DID you get those polka dots around the colored borders? Delightful display. Tasty, too.

I think Velveeta gets a bad rap. I love it, but admit, I don’t eat it all that often. Liz isn’t crazy about it, but then she comes from a long line of North Dakota Dairy farmers. Then again, Velveeta IS 51% cheese (according to your piece).

I recently bought what I thought was a Frito’s Bean Dip. It turned out to be Frito’s cheesy dip that seems just like it might be the pepper jack version of Velveeta. Yummmy. Got to get to my Writing Practice!

I opened up that loaf of Velveeta and before breaking it up to melt in the crock pot, I posed it on the counter and took some glamour shots. And the polka dots are something you can do with the border function in WP. Just change “solid” to “dotted” (or “dashed” if you like dashes) in the code. Fun to play around with. (And since orange contrasts well with green or purple, I went with both for dots.)

I can see where Liz might like 100% cheese. I’m a purist when it comes to certain foods, too, that I consider to be part of my heritage. But the cool thing about Velveeta is that using Velveeta for chile con queso IS the tradition. My mom did it (still does), her sisters, my sisters. All of us. It’s just what we do.

And I have to say, when I go to my mom’s to visit, I’ll often eat the slices of Kraft American cheese she has in the fridge. They’re kind of Velveeta-like, and I love them melted on a tortilla, even though they have that tendency to stick to your teeth like Velveeta does. Still. It’s all about what you know.

Excellent, so glad you found it. Last time I made it, my only problem was that my crockpot, even on low, got too hot. Next time after everything melts, I’ll keep the temp on Warm instead of Low.

Also, as for the sizes of the cans…the evaporated milk is not the gigantic can but the normal size. In other words, not the little half-sized but the regular one. Ugh, wish I cooked enough to know the number of ounces that come in these cans. 😦

Velveeta Cheese: It is one of those products packaged in space age material, the kind of food that astronauts brought to space. Going into space is a generally healthy activity for human beings; the low gravity is not a problem. They drink Tang up there in zero atmospheres, too. Maybe they squirt that meat whiz onto Ritz crackers. All this food, because it can last forever in the grocery isle next to the macaroni and cheese section, should be the best. It comes from the age of scientific advancement, when scientific concoctions were considered better than the real ting. Margarine is better than butter, of course.

Aah, Velveeta, something I associate with the lazy days of childhood, when I would complain to my mother, “I’m bored,” and she would turn her attention from the stove and the melting cheese stuff of space to kick me out of the house.

So, is Velveeta better than real cheese? Does it taste good with SPAM? When I cook them together in a microwave, the oil on the plate resembles WD-40, or fake fat, like Margarine. You think that might be the cholesterol encouraging trigger that leads too many of us to heart disease?

There is a problem with this fat. Placed in an open environment where halogens like chlorine and fluorine float around, the open carbon molecules will bond to these free radicals. Write down the string of carbons in a row; surround it partially with hydrogen, then fill in the empty spaces with chlorine, Viola! You have the chemical equivalent of a Ziplock baggy.

But it doesn’t stop there. No, take breast milk, what a messy thing. It gets in the way of shopping, so science developed a new and improved version based on cow’s milk. It had less fat, more protein, and of course, could be mass produced with a better balance of vitamins and minerals. They called it “FORMULA.” How scientific is that? Think of the hassle it saved, women could work all day, 50 hours a week if they wanted, because anyone can give a baby formula. Unfortunately for us, scientists had not discovered the proteins in breast milk that act as genetic triggers for human brain development. But who cares?! It might be better to have children behave more like cows.

The whole thing is a crock of margarine. We’ve been sold a pile of chemical formulas, wrapped in shiny packaging. They want us to keep scooping it in and stuffing our bellies to the max with space age “comfort food.” BEWARE!

it really does melt nicely and your chile con queso recipe is divine! I usually use it on Nachos, but apparently there are a lot more things you can make with it. Upon searching for recipes I found yours and their facebook. Seeing as you’re keen with your Velveeta loaf, maybe you can find or tweak some of these from their FB page?

Bless your heart for stopping by, Destiny, and reporting back on the chile con queso. I’ve been craving it lately, meant to make it for our 4th of July party but ran out of time. (I do have a one-pound loaf hanging around, which when my husband saw it on the laundry room table wondered why it wasn’t refrigerated.) Thanks for the FB page link. I have a FB account but will have to consider whether to become a friend/fan or not. I wonder if has a lot of activity. Also, have to admit that I’m not responsible for the chile con queso recipe; that was my aunt. She’s in her 80s. Were I that creative with food (er, um, foodstuff) I would defintely tweak away. But I rely on my elders (ha!) for that wisdom.